Proposed CoP Changes for Singles | Page 11 | Golden Skate

Proposed CoP Changes for Singles

prettykeys

Medalist
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
I'm not sure where to put this...so I'll just put it here.

Mathman, in some other discussions, raised the point that randomly selecting 7 judges' scores from a panel of 9 does not really "add more randomness" to the judging, because whether you selected 7 judges randomly from the whole population of available judges; or you select 9 judges randomly, and then from those 9, you further shrink it to 7 randomly, makes no difference.

I don't know why this thought came to me so late, but this is not really true, because it is assuming that the initially selected 9 judges (from which the final scoring panel is shrunk down to 7) are randomly chosen, and they are not. Most significantly, the initial panel of 9 judges is chosen to at least be somewhat fair in representing certain nations. When you randomly toss out 2 judges' scores, you have the possibility of skewing the final result in favour of certain nations' bias "just because".

So it would be very important to keep the scores of all the original judges on the panel in considering the final score, not only so that you have a larger sampling of scores from different judges...but also in order to not introduce a random element of bias in terms of which scores are accounted for and which are randomly tossed out.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Most significantly, the initial panel of 9 judges is chosen to at least be somewhat fair in representing certain nations.

The "population" from which the draw is made is the set of all federations, not the set of all individual judges. The ISU conducts a draw 6 months or so in advance to choose which federations will get to send judges. (I believe that this draw is random among all federations, but I am not completely sure about that. It seems like the major federations get "lucky" more often than the smaller powers, but this may be only because they have qualified judges for each of the four disciplines, while others don't and so do not participate in all four draws.)

Anyway, if the draw is random among all federations, and then the draw that cuts down the panel to the representatives of 7 federations from the original 9 is , too, then i think the argument is still valid. Slovakia has just as great a chance to end up as one of the final seven whether the random draw has two steps or one (namely, 7 chances out of however many federations there are.)

Instead of thinking about this problem internally, think about the end result. You are the judge that the Canadian federation intends to nominate. As long as Canada is not favored or disfavored over any other nation, you have 7 chances in 100 (or whatever) of ending up on the "marking panel" -- exactly the same as the representative from any of the other 99 countries.
 
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prettykeys

Medalist
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
The "population" from which the draw is made is the set of all federations, not the set of all individual judges. The ISU conducts a draw 6 months or so in advance to choose which federations will get to send judges. (I believe that this draw is random among all federations, but I am not completely sure about that. It seems like the major federations get "lucky" more often than the smaller powers, but this may be only because they have qualified judges for each of the four disciplines, while others don't and so do not participate in all four draws.)

Anyway, if the draw is random among all federations, and then the draw that cuts down the panel to the representatives of 7 federations from the original 9 is , too, then i think the argument is still valid. Slovakia has just as great a chance to end up as one of the final seven whether the random draw has two steps or one (namely, 7 chances out of however many federations there are.)

Instead of thinking about this problem internally, think about the end result. You are the judge that the Canadian federation intends to nominate. As long as Canada is not favored or disfavored over any other nation, you have 7 chances in 100 (or whatever) of ending up on the "marking panel" -- exactly the same as the representative from any of the other 99 countries.
I'm not sure if I'm understanding completely, but I noticed that for example, in a competition that YuNa Kim is participating in, there is always at least one Korean judge. I don't think that is random. Unless I am misunderstanding the meaning of "major federation" to mean those that have a top 5 skater or something? My conjecture is really based mostly on this observation. I think the intent is that anyone who has a fairly strong shot at the podium "earns" the privilege to have a judge from her nation be on the panel. South Korea is not exactly a powerhouse in the Figure Skating world, and I think the reasoning behind this principle is that it would not be fair to have a contender be marked by a panel made up solely of other countries' judges. If that is accepted, then the random selection of a subset of the panel is kin:d of defeating the purpose.

I bolded the part of your post that I don't think is true.

Edit: I just checked the panels of judges for competitions that YuNa has been in for the past year, and there indeed was one--World Championships 2009--without a Korean judge of the 9. But in every other instance w/ YuNa there is one. Although, this may be complicated by the fact that even if you are right and federations are chosen randomly, I suppose if a nation isn't too invested in a particular competition, they can turn down the spot and allow another federation to be chosen. :think:
 
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gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
At a small competition such as a Grand Prix event, there will only be a limited number of countries participating, so the chances are very high that a judge from each skater's home country will be on the panel. At the GP Final, it's often necessary to include judges from countries that don't have skaters represented.

The same judges can do men's and women's events, and also pairs, so sometimes the judge from the top skater's home country might end up on one of the other freestyle panels instead.

Ice dance judges come from a different judging pool, so it's even more likely that a dance team will have a compatriot judge on the panel.

At large events like Worlds or Junior Worlds, and to a lesser extent at Europeans and Four Continents, there are more countries participating than there are judges needed. Not every skater, or even every skater who makes it to the final round, will have a judge from their country on the panel. Sometimes it's some of the medal contenders who don't get that advantage.
 
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